Creating Your First Action

First things first - lets add a reminder to set-up OpenLoopz just in case we don't want to do this Walkthrough right now!

From the main screen, press the 'New Action' button. You should see a screen like this:



Enter 'Do OpenLoopz Walkthrough' as the action name and then press the 'Menu' button and select 'Save'.

Now you will be back at the main screen but it's still empty - ugh? 



This is intentional!!!  Believe it or not this is a feature!  Remember, OpenLoopz only tells you about actions when you need to know about them and it gets that information from contexts.  Contexts are a bit like categories and they are a major element of the Getting Things Done concept. 

Anyway, did you notice that your status bar now contains an icon of a basket in it? 

When you create an action without organising it (which means without specifying a context or a deadline) it goes into your in-basket.  You can view your in-basket at any time from the notifications window.  Another important part of Getting Things Done is to get your actions out of your head quickly without worrying about organising them and that's exactly what the in-basket is for.


So our action is currently sitting in the in-basket.  Select the in-basket from the Android notification window:



To see the contents of the in-basket.  Select the action to view it.  The View Screen looks like this:





Now press the 'Edit' button, tick the 'Next Action' context on the 'Contexts' tab and save the action again then press the back button until you get back to the main screen.   

Aha!  Our action is now visible:



By making the action a 'Next Action' we've given OpenLoopz a hint that we want to know about that action NOW! 



Creating A Location Context

Location contexts would normally be set-up for practical uses like an 'At Shops' context for instance, but for this walkthrough we will create a context based on your current location so we can actually see the context on the main screen to prove it works!  For the purposes of this walkthrough we will assume you are currently at home and create an 'At Home' context.

To create a context, press the 'Review Actions' button from the main screen and choose 'Contexts', then select the 'New Context' option.  Choose 'Location Context' from the dialog and you should see a screen like this:



Enter 'At Home' as the name of the context.  Now we need to add your current location as a place.  Select the 'New Place' option to load the map:

The map shows your current location by default.  Normally you would move around the map by holding and dragging with your finger and using the zoom controls.  When you find your location you would tap on the map to place the pin and set the location of the place. 

However, as we want to use the current location we don't need to do any of that so we can just choose the 'Save' option and specify a name for the location in the Place Title Dialog - 'Home' will do.

Back at the 'Edit Context' screen all we need to do now is tick the name of the place to associate it with this context then select the 'Save' option.

Your context is now created so let's create an action and see if this fancy location stuff works!

Navigate back to the main menu by pressing the back button twice.  Now, create a new action called 'Spring Clean'.  Ensure you tick the 'At Home' context then save the action.  You should be taken back to a main screen that is slightly different because now it contains a new 'At Home' context!



When you leave home (and get at least a mile away) this context will disappear from the main screen.  Good Stuff!

Projects, Sub-Actions and Contacts

In OpenLoopz, there is no distinction between a project and an action.  A project is just an action that has been broken down into sub-actions. 

Let's create our first project.

We will arrange a surprise birthday party for our best friend, Fred (everybody has a best friend called Fred don't they?).

We start by creating the project - which is just an action so we select 'New Action' from the main screen and type 'Arrange Party For Fred' as the action title.

Now, we can switch to the 'Sub Actions' tab which looks like this:



Press the 'New Sub Action' button.  You'll notice another 'Edit Action' screen is displayed but with a difference:



There is a red strip telling us this is a sub-action but other than that this is exactly the same screen as before - it's just another action after all.

Enter 'Invite Ian' for the action title then select 'Save' to go back to the screen for the project and you should see the newly created sub-action in the list:



Create another two sub-actions the same way you created the first one.  Call them 'Book Venue' and 'Invite Bob'.  Afterwards your sub-action list should look like this:

Now you can save your project which will take you back to the main screen. 

Your project is now entered into OpenLoopz but of course it won't appear on the main screen. We will see how to find your project in a minute.  First, did you notice that your in-basket counter on the status bar has increased by three!  By taking a look in the in-basket (accessible from the notifications window by dragging down the status bar) we can see that all the project sub-actions are in the in-basket:



If you think about it, this makes sense because the sub-actions aren't organised yet (i.e they don't have a deadline or a context).  The project action is special so it doesn't appear in the in-basket - it's just a container for other actions.

To clear the in-basket we can assign a context to each sub-action.  Select the 'Invite Ian' action from the in-basket, then press 'Edit Action' to go to the edit screen.

What context should we apply to 'Invite Ian'?  Well, it will probably be a phone call so we could create a 'Call' context - it's quite nice to have all the actions you need to do while on the phone together in one context.  However, for this walkthough we want to demonstrate the use of a Contact Context so we will create a special context called 'Ian'.  All actions related to Ian will be assigned to this context.

Select the 'New Context' option, choose 'Contact Context' and enter 'Ian' as the title.  Tap on the big Android icon to go to your phones contact list.  Locate Ian's contact entry from the list (or just pick anyone - it doesn't matter for the purposes of this walkthrough) and select his entry to return to the 'Edit Context' screen, which should now look something like this:




Select 'Save' to go back to the 'Edit Action' screen.  Remember to tick the 'Ian' context and save the action.

Notice your in-basket counter has gone down by one because Invite Ian is now associated with a context so your action is considered to be organised as far as OpenLoopz is concerned.

Now go back to the main screen by pressing the back button twice. 

Okay, a quick recap.  We started by creating a project to arrange a party then we created three sub-actions.  We assigned one of those sub-actions to a new contact context called 'Ian'.  We will come back to the reason for that at the end.  Right now, we need to assign a Next Action to the project.

To set the next action for the project we need to find it first!  This is easy - just select 'Review' then 'Projects' for a list of all your projects.  Select the party project to view its details:



Now, we need to decide what the next action is.  It's probably a good idea to book the venue before we start inviting people so let's make that the next action.

Switch to the sub-action tab and long press on the 'Book Venue' action until the context menu appears and select 'Set As Next Action' and you will see the action colour changes to indicate its now the Next Action for this project:



Now press back three times to get to the main menu and you'll see 'Book Venue' is in your next actions list:


When you have more projects, your next actions list will contain one entry for each project so you will always be in a position to make progress on all projects!

One final thing! Find the party project (remember how to do that?) and open the view screen.


Summary

This concludes our whirlwind tour of OpenLoopz. Many features have not been covered here including:

• Notifications
• Scheduling
  
• Stale Actions
• Time Contexts
• And More!

Please refer to the documentation (included in the app and replicated here) for information about all the features of OpenLoopz.

There is also a slightly less fancy walkthrough included in the app which walks through the steps involved for creating each type of context and it is also replicated on this site here.